The Watcher

by Monika Jephcott Thomas

  ‘Hey, my dear,’ the owner of the hand said, a smooth-skinned, round-faced old woman, ‘is that your papa there?’

  Netta nodded, rubbing furiously at her eyes, as the men in white suits loaded him into the van.

  ‘Hang on!’ the woman called out to the ambulance men, ‘this little girl is his daughter.’

  ‘So bring her along to the Klinik, or call her mother.’

  ‘I have no idea who she is or where her mother is, she needs to come with you.’

  ‘We need to work on this man. We’ve no room for a little girl.’

  ‘Are you working on him in the back there?’

  ‘Clearly,’ said the impatient man in white, hanging a glass bottle from the ceiling of the little van.

  ‘And your colleague is driving, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there’s room in the front for this little girl then, isn’t there,’ the woman said, shepherding Netta into the front seat of the ambulance next to a confused looking driver.

  ‘There you go, darling.’ The woman smiled at Netta in a way that reminded her of her Oma, as she packed the two shopping bags around her feet. ‘When you get to the Klinik you can ask someone to call your mother, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Netta mumbled, her mind a tumbling mess of faces and situations she didn’t recognise, and the woman slammed the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me, Bertel,’ Martha said peering round the bedroom door, ‘it’s Martha.’

  ‘Well, I can see it’s you, can’t I, now you’re here.’

  ‘Just making sure,’ Martha sighed. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Prop me up, would you, I’ve slipped down the bed again.’

  Martha approached the bed with a smile, but her silence spoke volumes to Bertel.

  ‘I don’t slip down the bed on purpose, you know.’

  ‘I never said you did.’

  ‘You think I like asking for help all the time?’ Bertel tutted as Martha’s considerable bosom was pressed in her face.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ Martha said, delving behind Bertel to rearrange the pillows.

  ‘I was the one who always did the helping, now I just have to watch and listen.’

  ‘And talk,’ Martha chuckled. ‘At least you can still have a good go at talking, eh?’

  ‘My mind is clear…’

  Out of sight as she hauled Bertel about, Martha raised a sarcastic eyebrow.

  ‘…My eyes are sharp, my ears are good. The least I can ask for is to be propped up so I can see. See them watching the house.’

  ‘Who’s watching the house, Bertel?’ Martha sighed as she straightened her sister’s nightdress.

  ‘Hear them crying and thumping about up there.’

  ‘Up where?’

  ‘How is it being on the other side of the fence?’ Edgar smiled reassuringly down at Max, ‘Probing thermometers, bedpans, enemas, other people’s repulsive noises, and, worst of all, tepid Ovaltine?’

  Max just moaned in response where he lay in bed, every inch of him covered in bandages and casts except for his eyes and lips.

  ‘You’ve been keeping us busy today in orthopaedics,’ Edgar joked, trying his best to keep his voice from belying his true feelings, his shock at the state of his friend, his fears for Max’s future.

  ‘Did I… was it… I think…’

  ‘Don’t try and talk, Max. You’re so full of morphine, you won’t make any sense anyway,’ Edgar grinned. ‘Just listen. The good news is we saved your leg. The bad news is the pin we used to keep your leg on with went through one of your kidneys. Well, that was Dr Müller, not me, of course. I wouldn’t have been such a rubbish shot, but you know Müller, he will not be told. He’s the chief, no one can do it better than him. Pah! So you might have to make do without that kidney, but the really good news is, you have another one!’ Edgar laughed.

  Max mumbled, ‘Did I hit her?’

  ‘What?’ Edgar leant over the bed.

  ‘I hit her.’

  ‘No, no, you didn’t. Netta’s waiting outside. Shall I bring her in? She’s quite safe.’

  ‘But I’m sure—’

  ‘Max, no one else got hurt in the accident. Don’t worry. The morphine is going to jumble your thoughts and memories all over the place. You’re going to hallucinate. It’s all part of the process. Just relax and enjoy the ride.

  ‘You’re home now and you’re around people that care for you.’ Karin looked at him, on his knees in front of her, and marvelled that there could be such a difference between mother and son.

  ‘And don’t concern yourself with work until you’re ready. We’ll all survive for a day or two,’ Max said with a consolatory chuckle.

  Martha stayed out of sight in the kitchen preparing dinner, but her ears were trained on the mutterings from the living room like a seasoned intelligence operative.

  Netta sat at the piano, hands resting on the keys, but she was glaring over her shoulder at the stupid girl who had stolen her father away from her just at the moment they were finally beginning to connect.

  Erika stood in the hallway, unable to enter the room or go back to the surgery, stunned by the vision of her husband on his knees in front of the bloody charwoman, holding her hands as once he did Erika’s on the stairs in front of their digs after the summer ball where they first kissed.

  For one who had just broken up with her gentleman friend, Karin was curiously buoyant. She busied herself with the housework and, if Netta wasn’t mistaken, was doing so with a hint of a song in her throat and the smudge of a smile on her lips. But then Netta was six, going on seven, so what could she be expected to know about ladies and their gentlemen friends?

  It was summer now, school was closed for the holidays, and Netta was in the dining room still trying to finish her lunch. Everyone else had gone, but she had to stay, her papa had grumbled, until she ate all her food. How could she possibly finish all that when she just wasn’t even hungry? So she’d learnt by now how to secretly stuff some food into her cheeks and spit it out later when the coast was clear. Which is what she was doing when Karin bowled in with a satisfied sigh saying, ‘I’m going to the bakery, Netta. Do you want to come? I’m going to buy a nice cake for your father.’

  Netta was disturbed by this information, the latter statement, the kind of statement you hear from your mama, not from the housekeeper. But she disguised her perturbation as mere puzzlement, inducing Karin to elucidate.

  ‘It’s to say thank you to him, for being so understanding about… you know, when I was… upset the other day.’

  Netta glanced at the clock on the wall and with a glee in her heart that almost shocked herself she announced, ‘It shuts soon. You won’t make it.’

  ‘But it’s only twenty to one, my love. You remember how to tell time I hope?’

  I am not your love, Netta thought as she tongued the food deeper into her cheeks, and yes I know how to tell time!

  ‘It shuts at one o’clock every Wednesday because Herr Brant goes to Essen to see his mother and buy more flour,’ she said carefully so none of the food fell out of its hiding place.

  ‘Oh. Well, I better get going then, hadn’t I.’ The smile was fast disappearing from Karin’s face, much to Netta’s delight. But Karin, in her new haste, had seemed to have forgotten all about Netta coming along with her and Netta, again surprised by her own feelings, found that to be quite irritating.

  ‘I can show you a short cut, if you like.’

  ‘A short cut?’

  ‘I know around here better than anyone.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, my love, but—’

  ‘You won’t make it otherwise,’ Netta said jumping up from the stool. ‘I’ll just go to the toilet first.’

  She hurried to the toilet, ejected each horrid bolus from her mouth, flushed and rushed out to lead the way before Karin could decide to go on her own the usual route.

  Someone was watching the house.

  The terraced
red brick house on three floors in the suburb of Mengede in the heart of the Ruhr district. Sulphurous clouds draped the rooftop and thick soot lined the windowsills, even on the pretty, round Tiffany window in the attic.

  The watcher started as the front door opened and a boyish young woman, as gaunt as the house itself, was led out by a little girl with golden locks.

  ‘It’s quicker if you go by the canal,’ the girl said.

  The boyish woman looked doubtful, but followed the girl anyway.

  That must be Max’s daughter, Jenny, the watcher, said to herself with wonder and envy churning together in her guts. And is that his wife? Jenny asked herself. She’d expected her to look more beautiful, more feminine, someone who would be more of a rival, physically at least. Part of her was offended that Max would marry a thing like that, because perhaps he thought Jenny was in the same league – and we clearly aren’t, are we, she worried. And part of her rejoiced at what she thought would be an easy war to win – if that ugly little thing is all I have to contend with, she sneered.

  ‘Jenny, Jenny, come on,’ Isabel hissed as she tottered across the street from the corner shop. ‘Someone’s going to call the police or something soon if you keep doing that. Can’t you be more subtle about it than just standing around on the street like that?’

  ‘I’m just looking. No crime in that, is there?’ Jenny tutted but let herself be tugged by Isabel down the street.

  ‘You need to stop mooning over that bloke and think about getting a job. If I can manage it, you certainly can.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a housekeeper. Can you see me as a housekeeper?’

  ‘Then find something else, but make it snappy. I can’t keep bailing you out forever.’

  ‘All right,’ Jenny huffed and threw one more glance over her shoulder at the little girl leading the pasty skinny woman down the towpath.

  Netta stared at the cloudy water as they hurried along the path. She remembered how scared she had been when she fell in after racing down the hill from the woods; when Peter and Josef had pulled her out.

  ‘Can you swim?’ she asked Karin.

  ‘Pardon me?’ Karin was focused on getting to the bakery on time and was fast becoming anxious that this wasn’t such a short cut after all.

  ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘No. I can’t.’ Then she added irritably, ‘Don’t tell me your short cut involves swimming to the baker’s shop?’

  Someone was watching the house.

  The terraced red brick house on three floors in the suburb of Mengede in the heart of the Ruhr district. Sulphurous clouds draped the rooftop and thick soot lined the windowsills, even on the pretty, round Tiffany window in the attic.

  Rodrick, the watcher, was drunk, but aware of his own great hulking form enough to keep himself in the shadow of the trees. There were too many people hanging around: the soldier; that blonde standing on the corner and that other woman coming out of the sweet shop.

  He hadn’t done a stroke of work since Karin told him she didn’t want to see him anymore. He had been so elated to find himself attracted to Karin, not least because he knew at last that there was life after Erika. He thought no one would ever match Erika in his affections, but Karin had done that. And now she had dumped him, just like Erika had. It was too much to bear.

  Over the last few tormented days, just when he was beginning to think about something wonderfully mundane, like finishing Herr Brant’s counter, or the price of varnish, an image of Karin would sweep through him like a phantom and take his breath away, make his legs buckle. He hated this feeling. He needed to put a stop to it. He hated Karin for putting him through this, but he hated the Portners more. He had a feeling that they had somehow put Karin up to it. That that meddling mother-in-law of Erika’s was responsible for all this, just as she had warned him off of Erika that day on the doorstep when he came knocking. The doorstep that little Netta was now leading his sweetheart out onto. The sight of Karin punched the air from his lungs again and he felt the need to kneel in the dirt. He slumped there among all the other detritus and fungus, the booze churning in his stomach and curdling his rage.

  Through the surgery window Erika watched Netta leading Karin by the hand. She was filled with a boiling jealousy at this slip of girl acting like a mother to her daughter; just as she was the night before when she saw Max on his knees in front of Karin, comforting her, in a way he had never done to Erika since his return from Siberia; just as she was that night in the bathroom when she had seen the way Karin had peered in so sympathetically through the open door at Max hunched over in the tub. Peered in with a sympathy Erika had found it so difficult to muster for the spectre of her husband which she struggled to connect with.

  She found her feet marching her out into the corridor where her next patient sat looking up expectantly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frau von Hagens,’ Erika said, ‘please give me a minute. I’ll be right back.’

  Frau von Hagens nodded politely and cursed internally as her doctor rushed into the street.

  ‘Don’t tell me your short cut involves swimming to the baker’s shop?’

  Netta shook her head and though she wanted so desperately to push the housekeeper into the murky water, she knew the trouble she would get into would be so great it would outweigh the glory. She couldn’t bear the thought of her father shouting at her again. She was scared enough of him already. So she contented herself with leading Karin the long way to the baker’s shop so that it would surely be shut by the time Karin arrived to buy her stupid cake for…

  Papa!

  Netta came to an abrupt stop as she saw her father sitting on the bench ahead on the towpath.

  ‘Which way now?’ Karin said.

  ‘Erm.’ Netta’s voice quivered. She shuffled backwards, praying her father wouldn’t notice her and ask her what she was doing here. He knew the streets as well as she did. He would surely realise she was leading Karin a merry dance and then God knows what trouble she’d be in!

  ‘Go up through the wood there and you come out on Hirtenstrasse. That’s the street the baker’s shop is on, but hurry, it closes soon!’ Netta whined and hurried off back down the towpath, leaving Karin perplexed and slightly miffed.

  Private Gerry Carter was watching the house. The terraced red brick house on three floors in the suburb of Mengede in the heart of the Ruhr district. He’d seen the young girl with the short hair coming and going many times as he sauntered past on his pointless patrols. Deep in his subconscious, the little housekeeper reminded him of his wife back in England, but he never allowed the connection to bubble up to the grimy surface of his lonely brain. As he leant with one foot on the wall of the sweet shop he watched her being led down the towpath by the little girl and bit his lip, tightening his grip on his rifle.

  Erika hurried out of the house and down to the towpath trying to catch up with Karin and Netta. What on earth was she going to say to her when she caught up with her? What on earth was she going to do with Netta standing right there too? She had no idea but she was compelled to carry on, compelled to at least smack the little bitch in the face, then without a word she could go back to Frau von Hagens and deal with her inflamed bunions with a renewed sense of satisfaction; wait for the little whore to come whining back later asking Erika why she hit her, what she had done to deserve that, and then Erika would give her what for all right!

  She froze at the sight of Rodrick lolling under the trees. The little bitch, the little whore, she heard the breeze say.

  It was a wonder the whole village wasn’t saying it, Erika thought, and not about Karin, but about me, after all I’d allowed to happen with him, this pathetic excuse for a man.

  She stood there for a moment slowly becoming aware of the rapidity of her breathing, the trembling of her limbs. That was anger, wasn’t it, she told herself. It certainly wasn’t arousal, her mind insisted, although the line between the two became increasingly difficult to distinguish as she grew older, she realised.

  She
heard the scuffing of heavy boots from a distance and turned to see a British soldier following two women down the street. She looked back at Rodrick.

  ‘Go home,’ she pleaded, but just who she was speaking to – him or herself – she wasn’t sure.

  Private Carter had forced himself onto some other German bitches in that very wood over there, he recalled as the little girl led the housekeeper past him, but even he drew the line in doing anything about it when there was a child in the picture. He’d get her, some day, he told himself, but that didn’t quell the stirring in his unwashed underwear right now, did it!

  A woman tottered out of the sweet shop, pulled an aniseed twist from a paper bag and sucked on it slowly. Carter’s eyes bulged at the spectacle. She crossed the street, hissing at some blonde on the corner in their gobbledegook language. ‘Jenny, Jenny,’ was all he understood.

  Carter launched himself from the wall and slouched across the street after the woman, who was now tugging the other towards the village.

  ‘Look at ’em,’ he muttered to himself, ‘rough as toast.’

  Just what he needed to take out his frustrations on.

  Karin looked doubtfully up the bank and into the wood. That way seemed muddy and steep. She did not want to attempt it in the shoes she was wearing, but if Netta was right she would be too late to catch the baker if she didn’t. She looked down the towpath in desperation for an alternative route and saw Max sitting on the bench. She’d assumed he was at work so the sight of him was surprising as well as pleasant, calming in fact. Her anxiety about getting to the baker’s subsided. If she had any concerns at all now it was just to find out why Max was here and if he was all right. As she approached him she saw his eyes were closed, his head tilted back, his furrowed brow angled towards the weak sun.